I think the thing I try to do as a writer is to bring worlds to the page. What happens with readers is they step inside those worlds, and they experience them in a way that they might not in their real life, and it gives them a chance to think about a bigger society and the greater good.
I mean, the constant question kids ask themselves is if it was me, what would I do? How would I engage with it? How would I treat the Jesus Boy? How would I treat Sean? Who would I be? Would I be Frannie or would I be someone else in this.
By the time they get to the end of the book, the asking of what happens next, what happens next? My question always to young people is, well, what do you think happens next or what would happen if it was your story or if you were one of these characters?
Young people get mad at me all the time and write, say, well, why did you decide that that kid had to die or that that kid had to move away or that Lonnie is not reunited with his sister?
I think it’s a way of beginning a discussion. What’s the happily ever after? How often does the happily ever after happen? In the real world, what have you experienced, or what do you see, or what do you know from your family?
I think in terms of getting young people to talk about their lives, and then to talk about the lives of others, and to talk about events in the world. It’s such a social period from kindergarten to first grade in the picture book time.
They’re learning how to get along. They’re learning how to be in the world. They’re learning how to be human in the world. When they get to be adolescents, they’re learning who they are and their power in the world. They’re learning about identity politics, who names them, how they name themselves.
A lot of what Hush, the book about the witness protection program, the big question is, when someone takes your name away, who do you become? If I woke up tomorrow and I couldn’t be Jacqueline Woodson, what would that mean? How would I begin to re-identify myself?
I think a lot of that stuff is stuff kids are wondering and thinking about and talking about every day. For me to be able to sit down and create a world where they can exist in it. John Gardner who wrote a book called Becoming a Novelist talks about the fictive dream, the dream of fiction, and how when you’re reading a book, you’re in that dream.
That world is real to you, and you’re a part of it. No one can tell you those people don’t exist. I think that when I sit down and try to create that dream of fiction, first for myself and then for my readers, by the time I’m finished with a book, the readers really do believe and care about and love the characters.
When they love someone, they’ll do whatever they can to kind of protect them and hold on to them and change the world for them. I think that’s the big gift of fiction. It gives young people the courage to create change and to talk about change and to talk about different ways of being in the world, of themselves being the world, of adults being in the world, of what’s wrong with the world, what’s right with it.
